


Paris, 1983

by gayforroxane



Category: IT (2017)
Genre: AIDS/HIV sorry, BAMF!bev, BAMF!eddie, also some pretty grody descriptions of violence/illness, drugs! sex!, georgie! alive and well, newspaper boy georgie, paris! in the 80s!, parisian gang au?, police officer ben, richie's a prostitute but that's not super important, some french words and french slang, the & is platonic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-07 16:53:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14675382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayforroxane/pseuds/gayforroxane
Summary: December 4, 1983:Georgie Denbrough sells a newspaper to a man covered in lipstick stains.Richie Tozier buys a newspaper from a kid, and pretends not to notice that he's being followed.Beverly Marsh follows one of her boys, catches the eye of the handsome police officer drinking his morning coffee.Ben Hanscom sees a beautiful woman, and meets with a well-known gang member in plain view of many cameras.Eddie Kaspbrak knocks back a shot of whiskey in a cafe at nine in the morning.Stanley Uris knocks back a glass of gin, while eating quiche in bed with two other men.Mike Hanlon and Bill Denbrough are busy.aka, i read this really cool article in the guardian? and? couldn't resist?





	1. prologue: a duck and a slut, take 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is for my french gang au anon! this is pretty different than before, but i love you and i hope you like it!
> 
> notes on the french in this first chapter:  
> \--'La Marche des Beurs' was the French media's name for the first anti-racist protest EVER in france - it's not a super nice name (beur = arab)  
> \--'Canard' literally translates to 'duck,' but it's also a familiar name for a local newspaper  
> \--'Marie' is just a name, but in this context it's short from 'Marie-couch-toi-la' which is slang for a slut or an easy lay  
> \--'Une clope' is slang for a cigarette  
> \--'Porcelet' means piglet

"Hundred-Thousand People Attend La  _Marche des Beurs!_ Get your papers! Get your--" The boy stops and coughs into his elbow, loud hacking wet with phlegm and sticky with blood. 

"Hey,  _Canard!_ " Across the road, a thin man in high-waisted pants and a half-open button-up shirt, smeared with December mud, waves at him. "Get your skinny ass over here! I want today's paper!" 

The boy crosses the road, dodging clucking cars. 

He stops in front of the man, a little out of breath, and swallows a cough, his chest aching, his throat sore. It's cold. His nose is running and the tips of his ears are going numb. In front of him, the tall, skinny man seems unaffected by the chill, despite his open shirt and thin cardigan. The man holds a hand out. The boy hands him a paper. 

"Thanks, Canard." 

The boy shrugs. "You're welcome, Marie." 

Marie sides-eyes him, a smile tugging at his wide, red mouth. There's lipstick smudged across his mouth and on his fingers, and it leaves marks across the grey-brown of the thin paper.

He folds the paper beneath his arm and flicks open a silver cigarette box. He tilts the pack towards the newspaper boy, brings a hand up to flick at the edge of his cap as he does so. " _Une clope_ , Canard?" 

"No."

"Hmm." The man takes a slow drag, blows the smoke out the corner of his mouth, away from Canard. "You've never called me Marie before." 

Canard shrugs, and guilt gathers in his fingertips. He flexes his hands and hopes it goes away. "Figured I should call you what you are,  _Porcelet_."

Something crosses Marie's face, slow and dark. It flushes his cheeks and draws his eyebrows down his face, his hands into fists. For a moment, Canard is afraid. He knows  _porcelet_ is not something you call modest, proper people, but it is what everyone calls the man in front of him, the man with the purpling marks on his throat and the swollen lips and the bruises around his wrists and across his hips. 

"I prefer Marie." The man drops his cigarette, halfway done, and crushes it beneath dirty soles of dirty chucks. His eyes don't meet the boy's, and the guilt slinks along his wrists and up to curl around his elbows. Marie usually stays longer, buys him a coffee and a croissant, his only meal on Fridays because the shelter is closed. Canard has done something wrong. 

He opens his mouth to say something, to apologize, and it gets caught. Hacking, he bends over, gagging as a clump of mucous and blood slumps the size of a marble slumps onto the sidewalk. He heaves and wipes his mouth. Grey chucks come into his field of vision as a large hand rests gently on his back. 

"That cough is getting worse." 

"It's damp." 

Marie huffs a breath out his mouth. "Oh, is the fluid in your lungs rain? Is that your excuse, little one?" 

Canard flinches away from Marie, curling into himself. A single finger wraps around a matted strand of hair and tugs, prompting his gaze upwards. "You thought  _I_ wouldn't realize? Me? I'm offended, kid. I can guess who's got Es-Tee-Dees just by lookin' at 'em. It's how I make sure they never stick their dick in me." Marie throws an arm around Canard's shoulder and pinches his hollowed cheeks. He stretches his other arm across his body and holds it out for the boy to shake, even as he drags them both down the sidewalk towards the nearest vendor. "Richie Tozier, at your service."

Canard looks up at him (up, up,  _up_ at him). There are three large, ugly scars on the side of his neck, round like cigars. There are straight, raised lines on his collarbones. On a patch of briefly visible skin, there's a jagged mark, an inch across, one side rough and bitten like a serrated edge. 

He takes Marie's - Richie's hand. "I'm Georgie," He says, and ignores the surge of nerves in his stomach, Bill's words bouncing around his head, about  _Marie-couche-toi-la_ and his obsession with Hel. 

Richie glances down at him, surprise written in his eyebrows. "Georgie, huh?" He looks down the street, his expression illegible. "Let's get some fucking coffee in you. You can tell me all about the motherfucker that gave you the gay disease, mmkay?"

Georgie smiles a little. "Only if you tell me about the asshole who left those scars on you." 

The arm around his shoulders stiffens before Richie throws his body into a deep, ringing laugh, pinching Georgie's cheek again. "Oh, we're gonna get along swimmingly, aren't we, ol' chap?" His voice comes out nasally and distinctly English and it's so spot on Georgie blinks up at him in surprise before bursting into giggles, leaning heavily into his side. 

A newspaper boy and a whore walk into a cafe, and a woman follows as they do. 

 


	2. a chicken, the tomcat, and some guy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first thing: HAPPY BIRTHDAY CROWN-KID!  
> second: French!  
> café - coffee/coffeeshop  
> pain-au-chocolat - like a croissant but shaped like a small meatloaf with chocolate in the centre  
> poulet - literally chicken, pejorative French slang for cop  
> mon ami - my friend  
> skin/skins - skinheads (white supremacists)  
> mademoiselle - miss (as in miss tozier)

"Your usual, Officer?"

"Please." 

"One pain-au-chocolat and a  _café_ coming right up." 

"Thank you, Betty."

The woman has a limp from years spent sitting hunched over a sewing machine. She tells him this story nearly everytime he sees her, that she worked in a factory making uniforms for soldiers during the war. She tells him that she hated those uniforms. She made six-thousand, eight-hundred, and ninety-six of them. 

Her café is always busy, and he knows the regulars better than most of his own coworkers. Her coffee is a little too bitter and a little too hot, but it's nothing honey and a generous helping of cream can't help. The pain-au-chocolat, however, is divine. 

"For you, Officer." 

He smiles at her, bright and quiet. "Thank you." She gives him a fond, tired look. When she turns away to help another customer, he slips a five Euro note into her tip jar. 

His table, tucked into the far corner of the shop, two comfortable little chairs with cracking upholstery, is free. (He suspects that Betty's dead-toothed stare has something to do with this, and that the ten years he has spent in this chair, with this meal, has informed all the other regulars). 

To his right, there is a woman. 

He pretends that he doesn't see her, that he doesn't glance at her every few moments, tapping his fingers against the table. She has long, white nails. Around her eyes, brown and peach smudges, ghosting over her waterline. Her lips are shiny with lipgloss. She looks over at him. 

He looks away. Redhair and a flattering white blouse turn away. 

At the bar, there are two men. One of them is tall and lean, wearing firty, platformed chucks cacked in winter mud, and the other is smaller and slighter. He hacks, deep in chest, wincing each time. The woman watches the men, though she pretends not to. She looks down at the newspaper in front of her, reading about the march yesterday. She thumbs over the word  _beur,_ lip curling in disgust. The tall man's laughter splits the café and the woman's mouth tugs up at the corners, fond. Familiar. Her eyes fix to his back, over his shoulders and the wild, curly hair at the back of his head, and down, down his legs to his boots. The stare isn't one of attraction. It's calculating. He's seen that look on his mother as she appraises his weight, wonders after him, asking if he's eating enough in the big city. 

The woman worries about the tall, loud man, and his swaying hips, his tiny waist. The Officer flushes and looks down at his plate. 

He hadn't realized that he had noticed. 

It's difficult not to, though. The man is wearing outdated slacks caught high around his waist, and they cling to his ass and his thighs. His jacket is cut beneath his ribs, and the slope from his shoulders to his waist is steep. The Officer knows who this man is, of course. He's heard of him, and the others who dress like him, like they're American and from a lost-since-passed generation, who prefer Elvis and Cash to anyone else. They call themselves the Vikings. The name is ridiculous, some reference he doesn't understand. This man is their only confirmed face to the gang: Marie. From what the Officer knows, he's a whore, a 'charmer' who used to work for high-ups in the French government, and he was born in '63. 

It's a testament to the lacking of the Parisian police department that they know so little, but if the Officer were to sit here just a little longer, he could maybe--

" _Poulet_." 

A man sits abruptly in front of him. 

"Eddie," Poulet says, reclining a little in his chair. He smiles lightly. "How are you?"

The man waves a vague hand. "Fine, as always,  _mon ami_. Though if I hear one more  _skin_ talking about the 'fucking immigrants and their fucking protests' you might have some blood to clean up tonight." 

Poulet watches as Betty hobbles over to Eddie with a trembling whiskey-on-the-rocks in one hand and a day-old muffin in the other. She thumps it on the table. 

The Officer lets his eyes flicker over the other man. He's thin and drawn beneath his pressed white shirt and blue pants, his black army boots and the cap placed on an angle on top of his matted brown hair. His eyes are red-rimmed. His nose and cheeks are flushed from the cold. 

Betty walks away and Eddie turns towards him. 

"So, Ben." Eddie rocks back his shot with unexpected precision. He doesn't wince even though Betty's whiskey in the strongest this side of the Seine. He gives Ben a brittle smile and switches his whiskey out for a bit of dry, chewy muffin. "How are you?" 

"Fine." Ben talks a sip of coffee almost white with cream. "Just fine. Life treating you alright?"

Eddie shrugs. "As well as can be expected." 

"Good. And your wife?"

A beaten, ugly gold wedding ring sits heavy on the third finger of his left hand. Eddie looks down at it, mouth twisting. "She's a bitch," he says, casual. "I've had my eye on someone else." 

Ben resists the frown that wants to settle on his face. 

They sit in silence for a few moments. Eddie orders a black coffee with whiskey. Ben finishes his pain-au-chocolat, staring at the hard muffin that Eddie is picking apart with rough nails and calloused hands. A smear of grease licks up from the back of his hand to his fingers. Ben pretends not to notice, but the Eddie he knows does not like working with his hands. There is dirt smeared beneath his nails. The Eddie he knows does not like dirty hands. 

"There's no point to this meeting if you won't tell me what I need to know," Ben says, quiet, conversational. 

Eddie twitches. "I won't give Hel up, you know I won't."

"True." Ben nods, stretching in his seat. "But I also know that Hel has been... less than kind to you." 

Snorting, Eddie says, "I've seen what Hel does to her victims. Their brains splatter on the walls and across floors. Their teeth pulled out. Their nails ripped off. Their guts wrapped around their feet, their own dicks in their mouths." He shudders and knocks back the rest of his coffee. "I won't cross Hel." 

Ben cocks his head. 

He's known Eddie Kaspbrak for a long time - nearly ten years. He's known his wife, Myra, for six. The last time he saw Myra, she was loud and doting, pinching Eddie's cheeks and fixing his hair, commenting on his weight with a frequency that made Ben uncomfortable. That was five-and-a-half years ago. Eddie says that he's still with Myra, but Ben doesn't believe him, because they fished a woman with her same bloated face and soggy skin out of the river five years and three months ago. The coroner reported three months of decomposition. She was never totally identified, marked as a Jane Doe and used in a university course on human anatomy. 

The Eddie Kaspbrak Ben knew six years ago hated dirt - under his nails, in the swirls of his fingerprints, on others. He hasn't commented on the state of the café. He hasn't made a rude comment about the man at the bar, with his slacks and his dirty shoes, his flirtatious laugh, and his no-doubt less-than-proper lifestyle. 

Ben can't help but wonder if the Eddie Kaspbrak he knew six years ago was not Eddie Kaspbrak at all, but some half-man, an almost-Eddie, a fake. An act. 

Apparently, proper-Eddie is involved in a street gang called The Panthers. They take down  _skins_ and helped organize  _La Marche des Beurs_. They wear strange pilots' uniforms and leather jackets from America. They carry baseball bats and machine guns. They like to make a mess. 

Hel is their leader. A woman, apparently, beautiful and terrifying. No one knows who she is, or what she looks like. All the police know about her is the way she leaves her victims: in pieces, gruesomely coated and spread over alleys and warehouses, their brains beaten in with baseball bats, their own severed dicks and fingers in their mouths. They found a man last year with his brains in his wife's mouth, her gullbladder leaking across his cracked-open chest. 

Hel doesn't do clean. Or proper. Or tidy. 

And Ben suspects Eddie doesn't either. 

He leans forward, catches Eddie's brown eyes. There's something in them he's never seen before - the grit of dirt and the echoing boom of a bullet firing, and the dull slurping crack of a baseball bat breaking through skull. The sound of a person's screaming, and the sounds that they make when they can't even scream anymore. 

"I think you know Hel better than you'd ever admit to me," Ben says softly, no longer conversational. "I think you know  _her._ " 

The look vanishes, replaced by the meek, withered and dry gaze that Ben knows to be Eddie Kaspbrak. "I don't." His voice is too sharp."

Ben smiles, just slightly, and leans back. He shrugs. "Sure." 

For a split second, Ben thinks that Eddie will do something. On the table, his hands curls into fists, and the muscles in his shoulders and collarbones clench. He quakes. And then it disappears. He stands, drops a ten Euro note on the table, and leaves without a word. 

Quietly, Ben smiles. 

The woman is still sitting next to him, but she's no longer watching the two men at the bar. She's watching the door that Eddie just pushed through, her head cocked to one side and her fingernails clicking against the table. When her gaze catches Ben's he doesn't back down, just smiling gently at her. His cheeks flush a little. 

She grins and gathers her coffee, sliding her chair in snug next to his. She sits and their shoulders press together. Watching the tall man laugh she says, "How do you know Edward Kaspbrak?"

Ben takes a sip of his coffee. "Oh," he says, "Just from around town. I've known him for a few years." 

She hums, and then, "There's more to him, I think, than most people know." 

Ben takes another sip of coffee. "And how do you know Marie?" 

A pause. "Just from around town." A smile curls in her voice and Ben turns and tilts his head to look at her, smiling when he sees her already looking at him. 

She holds out a hand. "Beverly Marsh." 

"Ben Hanscom.  _Enchanté, mademoiselle_." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter? who knows? though hopefully soon and hopefully with bill, stan, and mike? maybe? 
> 
> come talk to me on tumblr gay-for-roxane! lemme know whats going on and what you think


	3. a soldier and a bullet in bed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two updates in one week what the FUCK
> 
> french!  
> cent-mille personnes marchent pour les beurs - one hundred thousand people marche for the blacks   
> quiche florentine - ridiculously fucking tasty french quiche thing   
> matou - tom cat  
> rendezvous - meeting   
> poulet - literally chicken, pejorative slang for cop

The growl of a motorcycle filters through the window and a man takes a bite of quiche. He's holding it primly in one hand, a fork in the other, staring at the front page of the newspaper without appearing to read it. ' _Cent-mille Personnes Marchent Pour les Beurs!'_ it declares loudly, its grey paper seeming old and fragile. 

The man takes another bite of quiche. 

White sheets and a white duvet are clumped around his waist, and a long-sleeved white shirt hangs off one shoulder. His collarbones are deep pools of pale, unblemished skin. Next to him, someone shifts and presses their face into his hip, groaning as the man's fingers start to comb gently through his hair. Their hair is a shock of auburn, long and tangled. 

"Bill," The man says, amusement colouring his voice even as his gaze remains fixed on the newspaper in front of him. "You should have been up an hour and a half ago."

"Fuck you." The words are clear, and the man looks down to see Bill staring up at him, eyes half-lidded with sleep and cheeks rosy with a warm bed and a terrible hangover. He groans and buries himself back in the sheets. "My fuckin head Jesus fuckin Christ."

"I told you not to drink Marie's moonshine. He's got bad news written all over him."

"Wish he had me written all over him," Bill mutters and rolls over, flopping onto his stomach, face tucked into the pillow. 

Above him, the man laughs. "Your hard on for the slut is cute."

"I don't have a hard on for the slut."

"Of course not, dear."

"Stan."

"No, you're right, you're definitely not interested in the man whose ass you spent several hours drooling over. Not in the slightest."

Bill opens his mouth to respond, as furious-looking as a disheveled ginger kitten left in the rain and given a pint-and-a-half of moonshine can be, but before he can, Stan breaks off a piece of quiche and shoves it in his mouth. 

"Enjoy your  _quiche florentine_  and stop talking." The newspaper rattles as he shakes it, licking his finger to turn to the second page. Humming appreciatively around his mouthful of quiche, Bill curls an arm around Stan's waist, tucking close to his side. He licks at the stripe of pale skin where his shirt rides up, and bites as long fingers flick the top of his head. 

"Where's Mike?" Bill murmurs, pushing Stan's shirt further up his waist, nosing at the new skin, licking and sucking hickeys into him, smiling a little as his breath hitches. 

"Meeting Hel, I believe." 

Bill lets go of Stan's skin, propping his chin on his stomach. "With Hel? What for?"

Stan tilts his head back to rest against the headboard, and all that's left of him are deep collarbones and the column of his neck. Bill sits up and throws his leg over Stan, his hands around his ribs and his mouth finding new skin to worry between his teeth. 

"She's considering an alliance with  _Matou_." 

The words rumble in his throat and against Bill's lips. 

"And Mike's the negotiator." It isn't a question, and it comes out in two pieces, between biting an ear and licking a long line over his Adam's apple. 

"As usual." Stan's voice is still, quiet and careful the way it always is - Bill is being far too gentle to elicit any kind of real reaction from him. 

"Why not Marie?" Bill pulls away and settles his weight on the other man's stomach, looking down at him, admiring the marks along his throat. 

"Marie is too mouthy. The words just leave him without any consideration -  _Matou_ knows his people well." 

The plate clinks as Stan sets it on their bedside table, white ceramic against dark, heavy wood, old but well-maintained. It matches their broad headboard and the plate matches the sheets and the walls and the pillowcases, the drapes and the window sills, even the bookcases. 

"I'm worried," Bill says, very softly. He toys with the drawstring on his sweatpants, garish and bright red. 

"About what?" Stan is looking at him, gaze as steady as his voice. 

Bill doesn't say anything and the quiet drags on. The mumble of the marketplace in the square below their apartment is soothing and regular, a normal Wednesday morning in their home. The sun catches on Stan's eyes, colouring them gold and green and precious-looking. 

"That policeman Hel is meeting this morning--"

"We know Ben very well, Bill, and we have for a long time." A pause. "Tell me what is going on." His voice is not urgent or even particularly caring. Their conversation is, of course, secondary to what's going on in his head, the loud turmoil of emotions and thoughts and ideas that he hears at all times. Permanently distracted, internally-focused. Sometimes Bill is thankful that he's very seen all of Stan, all of his thoughts and concentration in one place, because he is a strict, dangerous man even while lounging in bed - to see all of him would be terrifying. Bill is pretty sure the world would not survive such an experience. 

"Georgie has been spending a lot of time with Marie." 

Stan becomes less-than still. "Do you think he's hurting him?"

"I--"

"You do, but it's unnecessary. I know you don't believe him to be a strong or intelligent man but he is both. He can take care of himself and be sure not to harm others."

Bill frowns. "Marie or--"

"Yes. Marie. He is--" Stan looks at the window, towards their wispy drapes and the grey-yellow sunlight. "--He is not a cruel man."

Something ugly and dark curls under Bill's breastbone, sliding like mucous from beneath his heart to the base of his pelvis, to soak and stick to his thighs, to his lower back. "And you know him well enough to know that." 

Stan's mouth tugs into a smirk and he meets Bill's green eyes with a sharp, biting challenge in them. "Of course. We spent a few nights together."

"Did you pay for him?" 

Tension slides, thick and darker than the wood of their headboard down the walls. It knots through Bill's hair and in Stan's hands. It locks Bill's wrists together. There's still in the back-and-forth, in the will-they-won't-they. Sometimes, all Stan needs is a push, the right amount of challenge to ruin Bill, leave him in pieces against the white of their bedspread, covered in hickeys and sweat and lube, cum dripping between his thighs. Sometimes, he doesn't care for it. 

"He's a whore, Bill. I paid what people pay," Stan says, and picks up his plate, offering him a bite. The tension slinks back to its corners and Bill relaxes into Stan, talking through a crumbly mouthful of crust and egg and cheese. 

"How much was he, anyways?"

Stan shrugs. "The total transaction was three thousand, eight hundred and nine Euro."

Bill gawks. "You spent four thousand Euros on a street whore?"

"Please," Stan says, finishing the quiche with a prim bite. "I wouldn't engage a simple street whore in sex. Marie has been doing this since he was very young. He's very skilled, and therefore quite expensive."

"Not skilled enough to justify four thousand Euros in one night, though," Bill points out, reaching for the jar of water on the bedside table. He holds it at eye level and inspects the flowing mint leaves and the swollen, pale strawberries at the bottom. No mold. He uncorks it and takes a long sip. 

"It was three days and three nights. I was not afraid to ask that he satisfy me in the way I required and he was not afraid to charge me for it. I am rather demanding."

"Who knew?" Bill mutters, and laughs, clucking a little as Stan digs his fingers into his ribs and waist. He smacks a kiss against Stan's cheek and arches back, stretching, feeling the pleasant burn in his low back and his thighs from Mike and Stan the night before. 

"We're having lunch with Hel to discuss his  _rendezvous_  with  _Poulet._ Mike will be meet us there when he is finished meeting with  _Matou_." 

The floor is cold beneath Bill's feet and he shivers violently, grabbing a pair of thick, clean socks from the bedside table. Stan smiles. He leaves them there because Bill always forgets how cold the floors are when the weather turns grey and wet and heavy. "I've hung your clothes for today in the closet."

Bill huffs. "I don't need you to dress me," he says as the closet creaks open, dragging against the floorboards. On the hanger in his hand is a pressed white shirt and a navy blue jacket and a pair of blue slacks. 

"Your boots have been shined, and your hat is on top of the armoire." 

Stripping, Bill says, "You know, normal people call it a dresser, darling." 

"Normal people don't make you cum six times in one night," Stan says mildly. 

Bill pulls his shirt over his head, tugs the jacket around his shoulders. "Wasn't it seven?" 

"Exactly." The words come from right next to him and Bill startles, steadied by a warm hand on his waist. Stan is fully dressed, tall and thin in his jacket and pressed shirt, his boots well-worn but well-cared for, standing only a few inches from Bill. 

"How do you do that?" Bill asks, struggling to lace his boots as Stan heads disappears through their door. He can hear the even steps he takes down the stairs, his pause right at the end as he hops the last one. As he stumbles out their door and down the stairs, over the lame step at the end, tucking his shirt into his pants, Bill considers how very much in love with Stan Uris he is. It's a little ridiculous sometimes, because Stan is the man who makes him angry and soft, gentle and sharp, forgiving and unyielding. He wouldn't trust anyone else with that kind of power over him. Stan is standing next to their front door, leaning against the wall, an unlit cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. Between long fingers is a lighter. He raises it to his lips and raises an eyebrow when Bill sticks his tongue out at him, feeling young and absurd. 

"How do I do what?" Stan asks. 

Bill blinks, and reaches up to tuck his hair beneath his hat out of habit except "Fuck, I left my hat upstairs--"

Stan presses his hat into his hands, and then hands him his gun before he can comment on the unbalanced feeling of an empty holster. 

" _That_ ," Bill says, following Stan down the street, heading towards Betty's cafe. "It's like you're telepathic or something."

Stan scoffs. He pushes Bill into an alley and stands in front of him, holding him still with his gaze. "Don't be ridiculous. I do 'that' because I've known you for a very long time. I know that you forget the floors in our apartment is cold in the winter, so I leave socks on the nightstand for you. I know you often forget your hat. I know that you rarely remember your gun because you are a good man, one who enjoys violence but would rather not kill anyone." Stan kisses him, long and deep, sucking on his tongue, and digging his fingers into his jaw, biting and pulling at his lower lip as he pulls away. Bill squeaks and blinks slowly at him. 

Stan cocks an eyebrow at him, eyes bright. "Aren't you coming?" 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love you all thank you come talk to me! lemme know what you think and all that jazz and im thinking we're gonna meet hel in the first chapter it'll be a gooder


	4. all seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> french!  
> cheri -- honey or dear  
> 'dégéneré qui pense il est quel qu'un d'important, eh, chou?' -- is roughly 'degenerate who thinks he's tough shit'  
> Matou -- tomcat  
> Hel (not French) -- norse Goddess of death 
> 
> this is kinda gory just by the way

"Please, please, stop, I'll do anything, please,  _please_ just make it stop, make it stop!" 

There is no sound other than the man's broken sobs. They split the air softly, like washing dirt you didn't realize was there swirl down the sink as you wash your hands. Blood seeps like a slow drip, to puddle on the concrete floor. Where there should be fingers, there is only bloody bone and ugly, limp flesh. 

Where there shouldn't be fingers, there are, resting on the man's bare thighs. 

He takes a rattling breath and squints at the person in front of him, trying to will his breath to steady even as pain lances from his fingertips to the space behind his belly-button. The outline of a knife is clear in their hand. He trembles. 

"What do you want to know?" 

"I carved it into your back." The knife spins between thin fingers before being placed on the table. A screwdriver is plucked up instead. "Backwards, of course, so you could read it." The screwdriver comes closer, draws along the man's collarbones and he sobs, the sound cracking out of his throat. It dances from his collarbone to one delicate nipple, tugging gently at the man's ringed piercing, up his neck. Behind his ear. It flicks at his earlobe. It draws across his cheekbone, flutters along his eyelashes. 

"No, please, no." The man shakes, and drool soaks from his mouth as he cries. The screwdriver - a Philip's head - rests carefully on his tear duct, barely brushing it. 

"I carved it into your back." It digs in, just enough to make the man shift. "I'd offer you a mirror, but unfortunately,  _chéri_ , you will not have eyes long enough to read it." 

Screams pierce the cold, stale air of the warehouse, echoing off the walls, dripping with the blood down the man's face. 

Breath wafts across his face, smelling of coffee and chocolate, and the screwdriver digs deeper, until the man can only pretend to breath as his life drips down the handle of a blue Philip's head screwdriver, onto a pale, long-fingered hand. "You should have answered my question the first time I asked." It comes out like a hiss, spit mixing with the blood on the man's face. "I never ask twice." 

Gurgled noises fall from the man's mouth. The screwdriver twists, and he groans, a long, low, primal thing. 

"I brought you a coffee." The screwdriver stops. 

"Thanks, Bill. From Betty's?" 

"Of course." He nods towards the man in the chair. "Who's this?" 

He crouches next to him and grins at the screwdriver, taps it like an old friend, and laughs as the man rolls his head away, limp. 

"Oh, no one special," Hel says, coming up alongside Bill, tiny next to his lean frame. The man chokes on his own blood as Hel's fingers dig in his hair and wrench him backwards, flinches as spit lands in his hair, drips into his eye, mixing wih tears and blood and sweat. "Just some  _dégéneré qui pense il est quel qu'un d'important, eh, chou_?"

Bill laughs. "How was the meeting with Mike?" 

Hel gives him a  _look_. "It was fine." A pause. "He's covered in hickeys, you know." 

"Is he?" Bill shrugs and takes a quiet sip of his coffee, eyes bright over the rim of his cup. 

"You and Stan are lucky  _Matou_ and I reached an agreement." Plastic snaps as gloves are pulled from slender wrists. 

Bill forgets some days. He forgets how ugly Hel leaves people, how their serrated edges are left in plain view of the rest of the world, how their tears and their snot and their spit drip down their bodies and they've lost all shame. He watches Hel wipe a cotton pad heavy with peroxide across the man's forehead, giggling as he twitches while it drips into his eye. Another cotton pad dries the spot, and Hel's lips follow, leaving a dark red kiss. Hel looks good doing this. Sharp. Bloody. Gorgeous, as always, better than the act the rest of the world sees, the half-being, living a lie and a half-life. 

"And what agreement was that?" Stan's boots click evenly on the floor as he steps towards them, a coffee held casually in one hand. He walks with a precise sway to his hips, his chin lifted, his gaze loud, cutting. Heat curls through Bill's wrists. 

" _Matou_ wants to share everything - territory, guns, enemies." Hel glances at Bill, amusement flickering over white teeth and red lips. "People." 

Stan raises a quiet eyebrow. "I'm surprised  _Matou_ used Marie as a bargaining chip." 

"He didn't." The rough stretch of a match and the flare of a flame, the stink of gasoline, and the whoosh of a rumbling fire. In the chair, the man screams, begs for it to stop. Over the smell and sound of burning vocal cords, Hel says, " _Matou_ made it very clear that the whore sleeps with whoever he wants. And that he's got a thing for me." A smile graces Hel's mouth, and a dark, wicked look follows when Bill whistles. 

"Yes," Stan says, watching the man burn with a little smile on his mouth. "He mentioned it when I paid for him for a few nights." 

"Really?" Bill helps Hel tug on a jacket, smoothing his hands down thin shoulders beneath the dark jacket. He adjusts Hel's hat, too, tugs on brown strands with teasing fingers. 

Stan hums. 

"How was he?" Hel asks, the three of them moving towards the front of the warehouse, each taking a cigarette and a light from Bill's metal card deck. 

"Very good, of course. Willing, but interested, submissive, but not boring." 

"Any complaints?" Bill asks, a grin gracing his voice. 

Stan laughs lightly, takes a long, slow drag on his cigarette, and says, "Only that he talked too much, but my cock stopped that rather quickly." 

Between them, tucked into Bill's side, Hel breaks into an ugly, snorting laugh, choking on the ashes and smoke in his lungs. 

 

"I met a  _man_  today, Rich." 

"Oh,  _Matou,_ to be young and in love." 

"Well your boy is  _young_ isn't he."

"I'm not fucking the newspaper boy! That's disgusting." 

Leaning against the wall of Betty's café are two tall, slight people, their faces warm with the specking glow of cigarettes. One of them is all wild, curled hair, and hickeys down his throat, bruises across the sliver of skin above the hem of his slacks. A jacket stretches across his shoulders, a knitted cardigan beneath. His skin is translucent, blemished with millions of red-orange freckles. 

"I think you're fucking the newspaper boy," Matou says, chuckling around a cigarette. 

" _Non!_ " Marie collapses in giggles, gin creeping like mice along the passageways of his veins. "You know he's older than me?"

"What?" Matou laughs and frowns. "But his face--"

Marie nods, gesturing loudly. "He's twenty-six! Can you fucking believe it? I mean he's got a nice ass and he wouldn't be half-bad--"

"You wanna fuck the newspaper boy!" Matou singsongs. 

"--in bed, but he's positive and I don't fuck with that." 

Matou winces. "That's horrible." 

"Disgusting, too, he hocks these fucking balls of phlegm and blood, and he's got--"

"Richie!" 

"--these I don't know sores I guess on his thighs and they bleed through his pants sometimes, real fucking gross, but he asked about my scars and he doesn't bother me too bad, even though he's a little louder than he should be about spending time with a whore like me--"

"Richie, Richie, Richie,  _breathe_." Matou steps forward, tugging the tall man closer. Gentle hands finger through matted curls. "What happened?" 

Marie twitches. 

"Richie." Matou's voice is heavy with warning. 

"Henry," he gasps, the fresh bruises on his wrists and his ribs and the ache of his throat sharp against his skin. He can still hear the sound he made when the man forced his cock down his throat, the sight of his own trembling fingers plucking the ten Euro note he left from his mouth, unsurprised at the sight of spit and someone else's blood. 

"I'm gonna  _kill him_." Matou clutches Richie closer, noses at his cheekbone and presses a very soft kiss there, gentle. "Or I'll get Hel to do it for me." 

Richie jerks. "You met Hel?" 

Matou grins. "We're meeting tonight, at the market. She's bringing her people." 

 

In a market, surrounded on all sides by dying brick and trailed by limping cobblestones, there are six people, darkness pressing against their legs, curling around their ankles like cats. 

A man and a woman stand across from one another, their arms crossed in mirrors. Their faces fracture and mingle and the people behind them stare, confusion pulling at their teeth. 

The man is short, shorter than the woman, even with the few centimetres of height the hells of his heavy black boots allow him. A white t-shirt tucks into blue slacks, pulls across his shoulders, over the curve of his arms. Brown hair curls out from beneath the cap on his head, and his mouth is stained red. His cheeks are flushed with the gentle sting of the December air. A soft smile graces his lips. 

The woman is slight, white-bloused and pink-and-white checkered. She stands with her weight in one hip, chucks tapping on the cobblestones. Freckles flutter over her nose. Her eyes are huge and green and loud and the gaps between her teeth catch the man there, thread him between them and around her tongue. 

"Matou," the man says, tilting his head to her. 

She raises an eyebrow and opens her arms, just slightly. He laughs and steps forward, allowing her to tuck her arm around his shoulder and pull him into her side. 

"Boys," Matou says, "Meet Hel." 

"Holy fuck," a man with bruises and wild hair says, gaze raking from Hel's boots to his hips to the broad line of his shoulders, up to his face, to his sharp cheeks and his huge eyes. He sucks his lower lip in between his teeth and tilts his chin down. "Aren't you just a fucking treat, darling." 

Hel grins, his teeth white and sharp, his lips so so red. "You'll get a treat, Marie,--" He licks his bottom lip. "--if you behave." 

The man's eyes close, just for a moment, and a blush spreads over his cheeks. He coughs and shifts. 

"We've met." Hel's eyes flicker to the other man, tall and dark, a friendly smile. 

"Mike," Hel says fondly. He turns to the other two men in their quiet, cigarette-lit circle. "This is Matou. Matou, Stan and Bill."

Matou laughs, a little delighted. "Oh, won't this be  _fun_." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey next chapter's gonna be explicit? and we're gonna get some actual plot and some good bonding/banter! i love you all come talk to me gay-for-roxane or leave me comments

**Author's Note:**

> yowza! i have no idea when im gonna update this but hopefully itll happen? and the chapters'll be longer!  
> come talk to me in the comments or at gay-for-roxane on tumblr


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